Maria Sneiider

A famous backstage photo was taken in Chicago after one of just three performances that Callas gave of Madama Butterfly; it shows the soprano in her Japanese costume, snarling furiously at a bailiff who had served a writ on her - the very image of the tempestuous diva. By contrast, in her recording of the role, 'it is, miraculously,' as the critic John Osborne observed, 'the 15-year old girl and not the great Callas who stands before us.' Her genius for vocal characterization finds an apt complement in Herbert von Karajan's conducting: 'a wholly sympathetic rendering [that]brings out more of the detail of the score than I have ever heard before', wrote Gramophone.

The role of the betrayed and finally murderous Medea became closely associated with Maria Callas. In 1969, several years after her final operatic performance, she even starred as Jason’s spurned wife – as an actress, not as a singer – in a film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. She first appeared in Cherubini’s opera in 1953 in Florence, with Vittorio Gui conducting, and later that year collaborated with Leonard Bernstein in a staging at La Scala; in 1962, the role brought her final appearances at Milan’s great opera house.

In 1939, as a 15-year-old student in Athens, Maria Callas made her stage debut in the demanding role of Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. Five years later she sang it professionally with the Greek National Opera Company. In 1953, when she was already a star - shortly to record Tosca - Tullio Serafin enlisted her as the last-minute replacement for an indisposed colleague at the sessions for Mascagni's one-acter at La Scala. The result was a recording in which full-blooded verismo was raised to new interpretative heights.

Two iconic works by Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) were premièred in Madrid in 1915, El amor brujo [Love, the Magician] and Siete canciones populares españolas [Seven Spanish Folksongs] – two works that brought into being the Cadiz-born composer’s life purpose of sublimating Hispanic folklore. Artistic manifestations derived from the soul of the people, especially the vitality and dynamism of Andalusian sonorities and cante jondo [deep song], became his most fertile source of inspiration.

Relentlessly pursued by Fate, Leonora in La forza del destino is a haunted heroine whose passions and fears are expressed on a grand scale. Callas’s stage experience of Forza was limited to her early career in Italy – in fact, Leonora was her first Verdi role – but, as Lord Harewood, founder of Opera magazine, observed, her recorded assumption exhibited ‘an unparalleled musical sensibility and imagination and a grasp of the musico-dramatic picture which is unique’. She took her place in a powerful cast conducted by her mentor Tullio Serafin.

Callas only sang Gilda in Rigoletto in one run of performances, in Mexico City in 1952, and she recorded the role three years later. She moves beyond the girlish tone and sparkling coloratura of the character's first scenes to create a figure of tragic stature as events unfold. 'Once heard, this rendering is never likely to be forgotten,' was Gramophone's judgement on her interpretation, and the same could apply to Tito Gobbi's, embodying every aspect of the accursed court jester.

This Tosca, made in 1953 with the forces of La Scala, is a landmark in recording history.Conducted with searing intensity by Victor de Sabata, it teams Callas with two of her closest colleagues, the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano and the baritone Tito Gobbi - a performer who could rival Callas in dramatic finesse and power. Tosca's aria 'Vissi d'arte' (I lived for art) has come to be seen as Callas's personal manifesto.

The role of Nedda in Leoncavallo's verismo classic never entered Callas's stage repertoire, and so her recording made with the forces of La Scala, Milan, between 12 and 17 June 1954 represents one of her explorations of an opera made purely within the confines of the studio, rather than developing over a period on the stage. But as in all such cases - this was the first time she recorded a role she had not previously sung - Callas's desire to explore it to the fullest remains paramount. There is a complete identification between singer and character, down to the smallest detail, that make her Nedda an unusually complex creation that grows throughout the opera as she responds to its desperate emotional thrills and spills.

In the six years that had passed since 1953, and her first recording of Lucia di Lammermoor, Callas's voice had maybe become less robust, but her singing had become still more perceptive. As Gramophone said: 'Mme Callas has refined her interpretation of the role, and made it more exquisite, more fascinating, musically and dramatically more subtle - in a word, more beautiful'.

The role of Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore was one that Maria Callas performed some 20 times in the theatre, and this recording was her leave-taking of it. Callas's Leonora was praised by the critics for its vocal and dramatic artistry. Cecil Smith in Opera magazine said: "For once we heard the trills fully executed, the scales and arpeggios tonally full-bodied but rhythmically bouncing and alert, the portamentos and long-breathed phrases fully supported and exquisitely inflected".